Is social media essential if you want to grow your podcast?
As someone who finds social media an exhausting part of life in general, I wish I could say it’s possible to grow a podcast without it.
But, unless you’ve got an existing audience you can mobilise through an email list, live events or a community, social media is going to be an essential part of your plan to grow your show.
Even if you have all those things, at a certain point you’re going to reach a limit on the amount of new people you can get your content in front of.
And if getting more eyes (and ears) on your your podcast is your goal (which it usually is) it’s pretty hard to do that without social media.
Does that mean you need to be on every social media platform for your podcast?
Absolutely not.
In fact, I’d strongly encourage you not to do that.
The more channels you’re on the more content you need and the more time you’ll have to spend scheduling and engaging with those social audiences.
Yes, you can use the same content for multiple platforms but some require higher posting frequencies which means…more content.
Scheduling is also a part of the process that takes a lot more time than you’d think and the more platforms you’ve got to schedule content to, the more time that’s going to eat up in your week.
Engagement has also become one of the most important metrics, which means, if you want your content to turn up in more people’s feeds you have to be engaging with the people who are engaging with your content.
And that takes time.
So how do you know what social media platforms to focus on for your podcast?
Ideally you want to do some research to determine where your ideal listeners are.
If you can’t determine that, I’d advise experimenting with trackable links so you can see which platforms are converting people to listeners.
There are a bunch of tools out there like Podder, that allow you to create trackable links that can tell you whether someone has clicked on your content and then, listened to your show.
If you’re spending time sharing content to a social platform where no one is listening (even if they’re clicking your links) that data can help you decide whether it’s worth continuing or whether you should concentrate your efforts somewhere else.
Can you track everyone who’s listening from social?
While trackable links are GREAT and a game changer in terms of podcast promotion they’re not a perfect science.
It’s great to get data on who’s clicking and listening to your podcast but some people will see your content and won’t click the link because they’ll search for your show in their podcast app.
Or they’ll see your content 150 times before they remember “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to listen to that podcast” and those are the people you can’t track.
That doesn’t mean the data you’re getting from trackable links isn’t useful, it’s brilliant when it comes to helping you focus your attention, but it’s important to note it won’t catch everyone.
Think of social media as an awareness tool for your podcast
Even if people aren’t clicking on your podcast links, I’d argue building awareness on social media is one of the most important things.
Having your show and content out there, even if people only consume your video snippets, is still a good thing.
You want your podcast to have visibility because audience growth is incremental so it might take someone seeing your content multiple times before they convert to a listener (if they do at all).
To make sure people think of your show when they’re looking for something new to listen to, you have to be top of mind.
And that means… in their faces on social media.
Do you need to start up a new social media account for your podcast?
Not unless you have to!
In some instances your personal account isn’t going to suit your podcast content.
In that case it’ll make sense to start up a new feed so you don’t annoy people who’ve followed your personal account with stuff they don’t want.
You can also get away with posting WAY more frequently about your podcast on a dedicated profile rather than a profile that’s about you generally.
The thing to remember when you’re starting any new social media account is you’re starting your audience from zero.
That means you have to build up that profile with content. And the more content the better.
You can also utilise hashtags and of course use your personal page to point people to your podcast page, but it’s no guarantee people will come across.
Hopefully, if your content is resonating, getting engagement and getting fed to new audiences, your social page and podcast will grow over time.
The bottom line…
If you want to grow your podcast audience, you need to be constantly bringing people into new episodes and old episodes, and you’ve got no idea what piece of content is going to pique their interest.
That means the more varied content you can have out there, the better.
And the more places people can see it, the greater the chance of them checking it out.
To get your podcast in front of people who might become listeners you need to be where they are, and most people, are on some form of social media.
So if you were looking for a reason to avoid social media, I’m afraid this isn’t the article for you (even though you’ve made it to the end…sorry about that).
You don’t have to be everywhere, but if growing audience is your goal then you are going to need some presence for your podcast on social media.
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Need some help starting your podcast? Download my ‘How To Start A Podcast’ guide or sign up for my online podcasting course, PodSchool.
